persecution, the place of her birth is unknown. When Anna Maria was eight
years old, they went permanently to Utrecht.

This distinguished woman was one of the exceptions said to prove rules,
for though a prodigy in childhood she did not become a commonplace or
stupid woman. Learning was her passion and art her recreation. It is
difficult to repeat what is recorded of her unusual attainments and not
feel as if one were being misled by a Munchausen! But it would be
ungracious to lessen a fame almost three centuries old.

We are told that Anna Maria could speak in Latin when seven years old,
and translated from Seneca at ten. She acquired the Hebrew, Greek,
Samaritan, Arabic, Chaldaic, Syriac, Ethiopian, Turkish, and Persian
languages with such thoroughness that her admirers claim that she wrote
and spoke them all. She also read with ease and spoke with finished
elegance Italian, Spanish, English, and French, besides German and her
native tongue.

Anna Maria Schurmann wrote verses in various languages, but the chief end
which her exhaustive studies served was to aid her in theological
research; in this she found her greatest satisfaction and deepest
interest. She was respectfully consulted upon important questions by the
scholars of different countries.

At the University of Utrecht an honorable place was reserved for her in
the lecture-rooms, and she frequently took part in the learned
discussions there. The professors of the University of Leyden paid her
the compliment of erecting a tribune where she could hear all that passed
in the lecture-room without being seen by the audience.

As an artist the Schurmann reached such excellence that the painter
Honthorst valued a portrait by her at a thousand Dutch florins--about
four hundred and thirty dollars--an enormous sum when we remember that
the works of her contemporary, Albert Cuyp, were sold for thirty florins!
and no higher price was paid for his works before the middle of the
eighteenth century. A few years ago his picture, called "Morning Light,"
was sold at a public sale in London for twenty-five thousand dollars. How
astonishing that a celebrated artist like Honthorst, who painted in
Utrecht when Cuyp painted in Dort, should have valued a portrait by Anna
Maria Schurmann at the price of thirty-three works by Cuyp! Such facts as
these suggest a question regarding the relative value of the works of
more modern artists. Will the judgments of the present be thus r